social

We’re pleased to say that some of the mySociety team will be in Birmingham on Wednesday 6th August for the latest mySociety meet-up.

These meet-ups are for anyone who’s interested in what we do and in digital democracy and civic coding in general.

Even if you’re not interested, coming along to hear our fabulous speakers might get you interested, and we like that.

If you’d like to chat to our developers about using or contributing to the code that runs our websites, or you’d like to ask us about our current projects, then you’ll be coming to the right place – we’ll be happy to answer any questions.

This month, we’re really pleased to be joined by the following speakers:

Nick Booth: Nick is Managing Director of Podnosh, a former BBC political reporter and television and radio documentary maker.

Podnosh was established in 2005, initially to make to make the Grassroots Channel podcast for the Birmingham Community Empowerment Network. Podnosh’s mission is to change the way the public and the public sector talk to each other and has grown from a brand which makes podcasts to a business which understands and helps people use social media for social good, and is developing tools to help organsiations capture their impact.

Open Train Times displays real time arrival and departure information for each train company, helping passengers to plan their journeys. It also features track diagrams displaying the location of trains between signals.

Peter will talk about his experiences using railway data feeds and the significance of National Rail Enquiries’ opening up of their real-time platform.

Zarino Zappia: Our very own Zarino (one of our Designer superheroes) will talk about some of mySociety’s current design priorities, including a redesign of TheyWorkForYou.com.

So come along to hear some fantastic speakers and to talk about civic tech in Birmingham and beyond. We hope to meet you there!

NB: Look out for Gemma (who’ll be wearing a mySociety t-shirt) who will show you up to the function room. Watch our Twitter stream on @mySociety to check for last minute advice if we have moved venues for unforseen reasons.

On Wednesday 2nd July, some of the mySociety team will be in Bristol for the latest mySociety meet-up.

These meet-ups are our way of getting out and about to meet other people interested in civic tech, digital democracy, open data and more.

We’re also very happy to chat about mySociety websites and the code that runs them, so if you have any questions, do come along to meet us.

We’re really excited to be coming to the vibrant city of Bristol, where loads of inspiring civic tech projects are being developed.

This month, we’re really chuffed to be joined by the following guest speakers:-

Matt Jukes: Matt is Head of Digital Transformation at the Office for National Statistics (ONS). Matt’s talk is titled ‘The Puzzle of Procurement’ and is about trying to build a government website to Government Digital Service (GDS) standards at the ONS without the benefits of their team, while trying not to break procurement rules.

The Delib team: Ben Fowkes and his Delib colleagues will chat about what projects are exciting them at the moment in the world of digital democracy, policy crowd-sourcing, public consultation, participative governance and open source. They’ll focus particularly on a local project they’ve been running with the Mayor of Bristol, George Ferguson, called George’s Ideas Lab.

Sarah Prag: Sarah worked, until recently, at GDS, where she was the Product Manager for the launch of GOV.UK. She’s now living and working in Bristol, with a focus on local public services. Sarah will talk about the user centred approach GDS took when they developed GOV.UK, and how this can be applied to other digital services.

So come along to hear some fantastic speakers and to talk about civic tech in Bristol and beyond. We hope to meet you there!

NB: Look out for the mySociety hoodie (they look like this, only usually with a person inside). Watch our Twitter stream on @mySociety to check for last minute advice if we have moved venues for unforseen reasons.

Thanks to everyone who came to Wednesday night’s meet-up at the uber-cool Founders Hub in Cardiff: it was great to meet you all.

Apart from being fascinated by the Founders Hub’s 3D printer (we managed to print a bottle opener to crack open our beers!), we were really impressed with the interesting conversations and provocative debate that followed Daniele Procida and Sam Knight’s presentations.

Your Senedd: Motivations for creation and the development process

First up, it was really inspiring to hear Sam Knight talk about his motivations behind setting up and developing Your Senedd. Your Senedd is your go-to website to find out about the Welsh Assembly; whether you want to know who your Assembly Member is, their background and what speeches they’ve made, or read recent debates, it’s all there. You can even sign up for the weekly newsletter that gives an overview of what the Assembly is working on that week and what odd Assembly terminology actually means.

Sam set up Your Senedd back in 2011 in order to help more Welsh people engage with their Assembly, after hearing that only half of Welsh people knew who their first minister was. He also wanted to find a way to provide the Welsh public with information from the Assembly that wasn’t just inflammatory or sensational, as in the pre-Your Senedd days most of the Welsh Assembly debates reported by the mainstream media were ones that provoked anger, meaning that the public didn’t get to hear about the debates that really did matter to them. Your Senedd provides the public with impartial information about all Assembly debates.

The future of Your Senedd

Sam has improvements in mind for the website too: as with TheyWorkForYou, he plans to show Assembly Members’ voting history; he’d like to produce easy-to-read guides on how the Assembly works and how the public can get involved; and he would like the site to become more of a two-way conversation, instead of a one-way broadcaster. He plans to put all of the Assembly’s Statements of Opinion (similar to Westminster’s Early Day Motions) on the site and encourage the public to vote on them. What a great way to get people more involved with politics!

Your Senedd doesn’t just encourage the public to engage more in Welsh politics – Sam said that one Assembly Member was so scared that his lack of participation in debates shown on his Your Senedd page would damage his reputation, that he’s been involved with every debate since! Scaring Assembly Members into action wasn’t part of Sam’s original motivation, but it’s certainly an added benefit!

If you have any questions for Sam, or any ideas of how Your Senedd could be improved or shared, please give him a tweet.

Daniele Procida: ‘The Bodiless Head of the Programmer’

Our second talk of the night was by Daniele Procida, who gave us an exclusive preview of his presentation for DjangoCon Europe, where he’ll be presenting in May. Daniele is co-organiser of DjangoCon Europe and runs DjangoCMS, as well as managing the University of Cardiff’s School of Medicine’s website.

Daniele’s presentation was called ‘The Bodiless Head of the Programmer’ and drew from his background in philosophy. Daniele asked provocative questions such as ‘Who are the programmers that are increasingly building the world we live in and determining the systems that govern our lives?’ and ‘Does it matter who they are or just what they do?’.

The liberalist stance is that it only matters what people do and not who they are – which as Daniele pointed out, is perfectly good and the correct approach when it comes to the justice system for example, but he questioned this approach when thinking about programmers. According to Daniele, we need to be more concerned about who programmers are, to make sure that not only one type or group of people are building our virtual new world, and therefore not taking into account the needs of those who are different from them.

Daniele’s opinion is that there are currently too many white males in programming which liberalism says doesn’t matter (because the things they make should matter) but actually it does matter, because their inherent privilege affects the things they make and the way they see problems, meaning they can never fully understand the experience of someone who has lived without said privilege.

Daniele’s presentation and thoughts fuelled a really good debate amongst those who came along – a healthy mix of agreement and disagreement was great to see, reminding us that we’re all entitled to our own opinions!

If you’re intrigued by Daniele’s talk and viewpoints – try and check him out at DjangoCon in May.

Many thanks to both Sam and Daniele for coming to do presentations – hope to see you again when we’re back in Cardiff!

mySociety Monthly Meet-ups

Our meet-ups now take place at different cities across the UK on the first Wednesday of every month. The next one will be in Bath on 7th May. Sign up here.

Our programme of meet-ups is open to everyone. So whether you’re an open source veteran, or just a curious newbie interested in anything you see on mysociety.org, please come along.

Your Senedd was launched in 2011 and aims to make the Welsh Assembly more accessible to the public by providing information on all Assembly Members and publishing all Assembly debates. Sam will be chatting about his motivations behind setting up Your Senedd and the development process.

Daniele Procida: Daniele manages Cardiff University’s School of Medicine’s website, and the applications that publish it. These include Arkestra and other open-source Python/Django applications.

Come along to hear Daniele’s talk “The bodiless head of the programmer”.

He’ll also be around to chat about his work on django CMS and encouraging others to contribute to open source software.

When: Wednesday 2nd April, drop in any time between 6pm and 9pmWhere: The Founders Hub, 119 St Mary Street, Cardiff, CF10 1DYHow: Add your name to the Lanyrd page: http://lanyrd.com/2014/mysocial-2-april/, so we know you’re coming.Who: Anyone who fancies it.

NB: Look out for the mySociety hoodie (they look like this, only usually with a person inside). Watch our Twitter stream on @mySociety to check for last minute advice about where we are sitting or if we have moved venues for unforseen reasons.

Yep, now it’s Manchester’s turn. We’ve been having mySociety meet-ups in towns all over the UK – it’s been great to meet people for a friendly chat and a drink.

If you’re local to Manchester and you’d like to know more about what mySociety do, drop by. There’s no agenda, but we’re always happy to talk about open data, eDemocracy, and online civic stuff in general. And we hear that our chosen venue does excellent pancakes.

We’re in town ahead of the Capita Channel Shift conference. If you’re also attending, you’d be welcome to come and join us for a drink and a chat about digital tech for local government.

NB: Look out for the mySociety hoodie (they look like this, only usually with a person inside). Watch our Twitter stream on @mySociety to check for last minute advice about where we are sitting or if we have moved venues for unforseen reasons.

We’re holding our next pubmeet at the Kenilworth pub and we’d love to see you there.

If you’re curious about mySociety’s work, or just interested in the wider digital democracy scene, do drop by for a drink and a chat. You’ll meet (at least) a couple of mySociety’s Developers, our Senior Consultant Mike, and our Marketing and Communications Manager Myf.

NB: Look out for the mySociety hoodie (they look like this, only usually with a person inside). Watch our Twitter stream on @mySociety to check for last minute advice about where we are sitting or if we have moved venues for unforseen reasons.

For an organisation whose members normally work from home, we’ve been pretty sociable recently, with meet-ups, conferences, and our annual retreat. We’re glad to discover that we haven’t actually lost the ability to communicate face to face…

If you’d like to come and sample our sharply honed social skills for yourselves, there are a number of opportunities still to come.

Every Wednesday: London meet-ups

If you’re in London, do feel free to drop by and say hello, any Wednesday from 6:00 pm – 9:00 pm. We meet at the Mozilla London space – and there are often other interesting things going on too.

Meet-ups are not just for coders – they’re for anyone who would like to talk more about mySociety projects or the wider eDemocracy field. On October 30th, we’re tying in with the Open Government Partnership event; you’re welcome to attend then or any other week.

[Above: Our meet-ups are not always this busy! On this night, we happened to coincide with a Mozfest planning event.. speaking of which, see below]

25th – 27th October: Mozfest

Mozfest in Ravensbourne, London, is Mozilla’s annual innovative open web event for ‘technologists and creators’.

The event kicks off on the night of Friday 25th with a Science Fair. We’ll be there, showing our wares – in this case, we’ll be hoping to meet many of the internatonal attendeees and let them know about our open source software. But if you’re not an international attendee, you should totally swing by and say hello too.

30th October: Edinburgh

The next non-London mySociety meet-up will be in Edinburgh – watch this blog, our Twitter stream and Facebook page for details of precisely where (it’ll be a nice, central pub that serves food… suggestions are welcome).

That’s in advance of our attendance at the Channel Shift conference – but you don’t have to be a council employee to drop in. Come and share a pint and have a chat, whichever aspect of our work interests you.

20th November: Online Information conference

mySociety’s Director Tom will be giving the keynote presentation at the Online Information conference, the theme of which is “adapting to disruptive technologies and creating value with people, platforms and information”. Feel free to grab Tom afterwards for a chat!

4th December: Manchester

As with Edinburgh, we’re pitching up in Manchester for a Channel Shift conference, and will be taking the opportunity to mingle with lovely locals the night before. Again, pub suggestions are more than welcome.

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We hope to see you soon at one of these events. And, if you’re wondering what we look like, well, you’re in luck. At our recent retreat we took a photo of the entire team (plus a few guests). Here we are in all our glory – click to see a larger version, if you dare.

We’re having a meet-up on Thursday 17th of October, and we’d love to see you.

We’ll be in the Goat Major pub from 7:00 pm. Do drop by if you’d like to. There’s no agenda – it’s a chance to talk about mySociety projects (charitable and commercial), or just to share a drink with friendly people.

NB: Look out for the mySociety hoodie (they look like this, only usually with a person inside). Watch our Twitter stream on @mySociety to check for last minute advice about where we are sitting or if we have moved venues.

Thanks to everyone who dropped into last night’s meet-up: we hope you had a good time. From our point of view, it was a fine mix of technical and social, with just as much chatting as coding.

mySociety’s developers Mark and Dave, project manager Ben, and director Tom were on hand, and there were plenty of new folk, who’d come along simply to find out more about mySociety and the work we do.

Dave reports:

Quite often these discussions spill over into the whole Open Source world and how that works. After all, we’re at the Mozilla London space because we’re part of that sector, and Mozilla are a great example of people who generously share their (splendid) resources to make wonderful things happen in the tech community.

Meanwhile, Andrew continued to chip away at issues on FixMyStreet, and we also enjoyed Viktoria’s impromptu explanation of how graphene works (she works with it) by ingeniously using the Moz space’s hexagonal-patterned flooring.

These meet-ups are open to everyone. So whether you’re an open source veteran, or just a curious newbie who is bemused to discover that there is such a thing as free software – if you’re interested in anything you see on mysociety.org, please come along.

We’ve reframed our Wednesday meet-ups: they are now open to all, not just to coders. That’s not to say you can’t come and hack — some people do, and have even been helping us fix some of our longstanding issues — but that is entirely optional.

That means that YOU are welcome, yes you, and you. Come and hang out, find out about our projects or talk about your own. Meet people. Snack, drink.

Last week was the first of these more open evenings, and loads of people came by. It was lovely to host our first “special guests” Richard and Arnaud, and to meet an international partner who happened to be in town, Gaba from DATA Uruguay. Plus Sam, who apparently runs “the funniest computer ever” competition.

Heck, it was lovely to see everyone – we hope that you had a good time and will drop by again.

mySociety

We are a not-for-profit social enterprise. We are based in the UK, where we run a number of projects designed to give people the power to get things changed; we also work internationally to support partners who deploy our technology in countries around the world. This work is partially supported by providing software and development services to organisations that can benefit from our experience in civic technologies.